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広島じゃけ、そう話しとる
2019-Mar-15, Friday 13:37
My Japanese tutor and I get along extremely well, but we had a disagreement last class.
I lived in Hiroshima for three years, and my Japanese is flavored by Hiroshima dialect. Some of this is just word choice, like the words たいぎい (taigii, "exasperated"), or じゃけ, (jyake, something like "It's because of that"), which aren't in standard Kantō-ben. Some of it is minor pronunciation changes that slip out sometimes, like 知ってる (Shiteru, "I know") becoming 知っとる (Shitoru). And there's some elements I never picked up, like how the standard coupla だ (da) and its derivatives becomes じゃ (ja) instead.
But there's one very common pattern of speech I picked up based on formal vs. casual Japanese. In standard language, the formal negative is formed by adding ません (masen) to the verbal stem, and the casual negative is formed by adding ない (nai). In Hiroshima, masen wasn't used in daily non-business conversation; instead, everyone just conjugated all negative verbs in nai form and then slapped desu on the end if it was supposed to be formal, mirroring the way -i adjective works.
This grates on her because it sounds wrong, because it's a dialectical difference. It's the same way that Southern American English sounds incorrect to a lot of Northerners when actually it's just a different dialect, but Hiroshima-ben doesn't even have a big literary tradition or a lot of actors speaking it. It's also stereotypically rough or masculine, like a lot of men sitting around in an izakaya, so it doesn't have any kind of cool cachet. But dammit, it's the Japanese I learned! Tōkyō may be the cultural, political, and population center of Japan, but not everything good comes from there. I wasn't offended, but I'm sure not giving -ben up.
I found this sign that I remember from the train tracks leading out of Hiroshima Station, written in Hiroshima-ben. I'd translate it as:
That same lesson, we talked about Japanese food for half an hour, so we still have plenty in common.
And she was trying to think of a way to say "complex flavor" in Japanese and I suggested 味深い (ajifukai, "Deep flavor"), which she loved. And google searching later it is (one of) the actual terms, so.
I lived in Hiroshima for three years, and my Japanese is flavored by Hiroshima dialect. Some of this is just word choice, like the words たいぎい (taigii, "exasperated"), or じゃけ, (jyake, something like "It's because of that"), which aren't in standard Kantō-ben. Some of it is minor pronunciation changes that slip out sometimes, like 知ってる (Shiteru, "I know") becoming 知っとる (Shitoru). And there's some elements I never picked up, like how the standard coupla だ (da) and its derivatives becomes じゃ (ja) instead.
But there's one very common pattern of speech I picked up based on formal vs. casual Japanese. In standard language, the formal negative is formed by adding ません (masen) to the verbal stem, and the casual negative is formed by adding ない (nai). In Hiroshima, masen wasn't used in daily non-business conversation; instead, everyone just conjugated all negative verbs in nai form and then slapped desu on the end if it was supposed to be formal, mirroring the way -i adjective works.
This grates on her because it sounds wrong, because it's a dialectical difference. It's the same way that Southern American English sounds incorrect to a lot of Northerners when actually it's just a different dialect, but Hiroshima-ben doesn't even have a big literary tradition or a lot of actors speaking it. It's also stereotypically rough or masculine, like a lot of men sitting around in an izakaya, so it doesn't have any kind of cool cachet. But dammit, it's the Japanese I learned! Tōkyō may be the cultural, political, and population center of Japan, but not everything good comes from there. I wasn't offended, but I'm sure not giving -ben up.
I found this sign that I remember from the train tracks leading out of Hiroshima Station, written in Hiroshima-ben. I'd translate it as:
When you think of Hiroshima, you think of the Carp, right?The Carp is Hiroshima's baseball team, and they are much like the Cubs, both in their repeatedly losses and in the devotion they inspire in locals. And much like the Cubs, they've had a comeback in recent years, though not to the Cubs' level.
That same lesson, we talked about Japanese food for half an hour, so we still have plenty in common.
And she was trying to think of a way to say "complex flavor" in Japanese and I suggested 味深い (ajifukai, "Deep flavor"), which she loved. And google searching later it is (one of) the actual terms, so.
